In this video, I explore the innovative use of screens paired with kiosks in retail environments, such as KFC. These screens display high-definition videos of products, enhancing the purchase decision process and potentially increasing sales. I discuss the commercial and technical benefits of this integration, predicting a rise in kiosk usage over the coming years.

The Future of Kiosk and Screen Integration in Retail

Please, please don't lick the screens. So I was recently given a video. It wasn't taken by myself in KFC showing a panel of screens above some ordering kiosks which were tantalizing to say the least. They're showing pretty high definition good videos of their products and bundles right above the point of sale. This is a good time to actually catch someone. This is right at the purchase decision moment and therefore as they gaze their eyes up and then come back down to the kiosk they're much more likely to spend more money. So from a commercial point of view, this makes loads of sense. They're already inside the KFC so they've obviously made some decision to come in. I think over the next few years we're going to see a big uptick in the use of kiosks for making purchases and also for finding out more information. Pairing a kiosk up like this with a main screen just giving you supporting information whilst you make those decisions I think is a really smart move. Commercially it makes a load of sense. Just from a technical point of view I'm going to give this a four out of five. I think it is a sign of genius and a sign of things to come.

Explore how Dubai is transforming construction sites into attractions with imaginative displays. Discover how this approach can inform and engage the public, setting a new standard in construction communication.

Innovative Construction Displays in Dubai

Only in Dubai would a construction site look this premium. I recently saw that the Dubai fountains were being closed for refurbishment but they've been very imaginative with the way that they have reconstructed the construction site. They've put a ring of screens all around it which are in themselves something worth looking at and visiting but also can be used potentially to inform customers as to what's going on in the location. I think this is really smart. I've actually seen a few of our own customers in construction use external facing screens to inform the public about what's happening and what's coming. So I fully support this. I think this is great. It's quite bling but that is Dubai and therefore I'm going to give this a four out of five. It would be a five if I saw any evidence of them just giving a bit more information to the people in front of the screens.

In this video, we explore the challenges facing the digital signage industry, from the lack of common standards to the barriers posed by traditional business models. Discover how collaboration and innovation can drive the industry forward.

Why Digital Signage Needs Industry Standards

I recently saw a post on LinkedIn by Lee Dido where he said digital signage is dead. He wasn't talking about the technology, he was talking about us as an industry. And a lot of the points that he made resonated with me. I think that he might be being a little bit too pessimistic, but if we were to unpack it, the main problem with digital signage is, why isn't it already bigger? Why do most people outside of our industry not even know what the term means? Often people thought it was to do with signing a PDF online. Now, we see screens everywhere, we know screens work, people want to use screens, and it's certainly much more modern than putting bits of paper on a notice board. But it is fair to say that our industry is still in a cottage state. I think that there are a couple of big reasons for this. Firstly, the industry has not come up with a common set of standards. This means that in every project or with every bit of hardware, we are starting from scratch. If you look at the web industry, where I came from previously, over time, standards were made. Open source projects were put out there, and everyone adopted the same terminology and the same ways of working, and that lifted the whole industry up. And look how that's flown. I think that as a digital signage industry, we do need to get together and collaborate more, even if we are competitive. The second big problem I see is in the business model. The vast majority of digital signage projects are sold through the channel. Now, I do not have a problem with the channel per se, I think there is a lot of value there. But if you're a smaller company with a smaller budget, the likelihood of you having a channel-ready project is unlikely. This means that you have to have a large capex and a big project in order to be taken seriously. And for most people just starting out, they don't have that. There isn't a line item for digital signage in most budgets. I've mentioned that in a previous video. So companies like ScreenC

Explore common pitfalls in enterprise digital signage deployments and learn how to address them effectively. Understand the importance of audits, automation in content creation, and demonstrating ROI to secure necessary budget allocations.

Optimising Enterprise Digital Signage Deployments

Although every customer is different, we do obviously spot patterns and errors that people make when they're considering an enterprise digital signage deployment. Firstly, when we first speak to customers, often they have not done an audit of what they already have. So they haven't actually thought about the locations, the number of screens they already have, even if there are already some solutions that have been deployed inside of the business. Often when customers do eventually do that audit, they're quite shocked to find that there's multiple vendors and a real mixed real estate that's going on. In addition to that, some of the locations that they want to put screens, particularly in warehouses and places like that, may not even have the necessary cabling or networking capabilities to actually have screens come online. Secondly, once we are into the rollout stage, I feel that customers make the process of content creation far too manual. They often duplicate effort and make assets just for screens. I advocate for about 80% automation. I strongly believe the information that you want to go on screen already lives inside of the business and could be accessed via integrations, APIs, and various other means. But often people will actually copy paste into PowerPoint and upload, and that is just not sustainable and not scalable. So I would think more about where does this information live and put more energy and effort with us alongside you into thinking about how we could integrate and automate. I think one of the elephants in the room is that there really isn't a line item in the budget already for digital signage when it comes to necessary technology inside of companies, much as I would like that to change. It's our job to create that line item and maybe to display some other ones. In order to do that, we need to show ROI. We need to get the buy-in of leadership that this budget line item is essential. In your first three to six months of a digital signage deployme

ScreenCloud is evolving its business strategy to include resellers and channel partners, aiming to enhance its reach among enterprise customers. By doing so, the company seeks to be a key player in digital signage projects, especially those targeting employee and deskless worker communication.

ScreenCloud's Strategic Shift: Engaging Channel Partners

So, in 2025, ScreenCloud will be 10 years old. For the first 10 years, we went direct to customers because that was a new way of working and that suited our product and our customers best. But now, as we've matured into a bigger business and we have more enterprise customers, we need to engage with resellers and channel partners who are already working and serving those large customers. If we're not in that conversation, then we won't be in that project. We believe that ScreenCloud should be considered for every digital science project out there, especially ones where we're communicating to employees and deskless workers. So, this year, it's time to engage the channel and we are open for more conversations and we're excited about what comes next. If you're a reseller or channel partner in my network, please get in touch. We'd love to talk to you more.

Discover how our team is revolutionising digital signage solutions for retailers and offices. With over 10,000 customers, we're committed to enhancing screen communication and pushing boundaries in technology for the next decade.

Innovating Digital Signage for Retailers and Offices

The devs have been working on an interesting technology hack, and we think that there might be something interesting here, probably for retailers, large offices with multiple screens. It was exactly 10 years today that my co-founder, David, and I first publicly spoke about screen cloud, a prototype digital signage product that Luke, our other co-founder, and the team were building. We're trying to make it better, or easier, to connect up multiple screens and push content to them. So, in this case, we're looking to push HTML5 content, because that gives us the greatest variety of things we could then do with said screens, and really looking at a whole range of devices, from phones and tablets, computer screens, to just smart, inverted commas, because they're really not that smart when you get under the hood, TVs, and we think that there might be something interesting here, probably for retailers, large offices with multiple screens, and even small offices as well, I mean, just really any kind of company or retailer that's trying to get messages out there, and also maybe control them from the central point. So, definitely looking a little bit older, and certainly a bit wiser when it comes to digital signage. Developing that product was way harder than we could ever have imagined, but it's also been incredibly fulfilling. We have over 10,000 customers, a fantastic team of over 100 people, and every single day we get up and continue to innovate the platform and try and bring that vision to life. We're focused these days more on screens that communicate, this is a huge passion, and this year we want to educate our customers even more so they can get the most of those screens in their environment. So, we're excited for the next 10 years.

ScreenCloud announces a significant investment from Tenzing, a UK growth equity fund. This partnership will fuel M&A activities and support the company's vision for digital signage in the AI era. Special thanks to the ScreenCloud team and partners for their hard work.

ScreenCloud Secures Major Investment from Tenzing

It is my great pleasure to announce that ScreenCloud has taken majority investment from the UK growth equity fund, Tenzing. We are the fourth investment out of their Fund 3, a £900m fund focused exclusively on software companies at the growth stage. So why Tenzing? Well, firstly, their brand and their core values. Tenzing, if you hadn't already clocked, is the Sherpa that helped Edmund Hillary summit Mount Everest. Tenzing's brand is all about supporting entrepreneurs in their journey and fully realising the growth potential of UK companies. Now, with this level of financial backing, we can start to explore M&A activity inside of our category. So cue a load of investment bankers sliding into my DMs, but you're very welcome to because Tenzing have a portfolio acquisitions director who will be helping along the way. And thirdly, their passion and enthusiasm for the vision that we have here at ScreenCloud for digital signage today and into the future in the era of AI. They are not just about the finance, they're very much about the journey. There are a huge number of people that I would like to thank. Firstly, the team at ScreenCloud, particularly the finance and leadership team who have worked tirelessly to help us through this deal. I'd like to also thank the other funds which took part in the process. I really respect you and learned a lot along the way from all of you. I'd like to give a big shout out to the fabulous investment banking team at Silver Peak who have been with us shoulder to shoulder all the way. And all of our other advisors and various consultants who've been involved in the due diligence process, legal process, finance process, tax process, you guessed it, all those processes. We had professionals along the way. Thank you for your hard work on both the buy and sell side. And to all of the investors who've backed us this far, we got over the first mountain. The 10-year goal that we set ourselves back in 2015 has been fulfilled. I'd like to thank the

Discover how McDonald's has digitally transformed their menu boards and kiosks, resulting in significant financial gains. Learn about the strategies used to increase basket value and drive revenue growth.

McDonald's Digital Transformation Success

These screens make McDonald's one billion dollars a year. This thread on X by Alex was a really insightful breakdown of how McDonald's have digitally transformed their menu boards and kiosks using screens over the last few years, and it's been a huge financial success. Now, independently of this, I had already heard that men in particular were more likely to buy a second hamburger on a kiosk than in front of a person because of the social shame of ordering an even bigger meal. Alex does a great job of breaking this down further and seeing how this is really driving up the basket value. They're doing quite clever things, placing expensive items with cheaper items that then see even better value, and of course, right at the end, rounding that up into a meal. Because they're also encouraging people to use credit card, they're more likely to spend more than when they're handing over cash. So overall, it's pretty hard to argue with a billion dollars of extra revenue. My screen score is five out of five, and no judgment on the food. I think this is a sign of genius. Let me know in the comments below.

Explore why Pixii is a superior choice for your display needs compared to the Amazon Fire Stick. Discover the advantages for both new and long-term users, and learn about the ongoing improvements in the product's launch phase.

Upgrade Your Display with Pixii for Better Performance

So if you are a new or existing customer looking to add new screens on the Amazon Fire Stick, I would say that that is not a good option. You can look at the business version of the Amazon Signage Stick or consider the Pixii, which is perfect for your needs. Now, if you are a customer who's been using a Fire Stick for a long time, those devices will be getting a little old and are probably near their end of life. In that regard, I still think Pixii is what you should be considering and looking forward to using in the future. Let me know any feedback on this product. It's just the launch phase and we're going to keep making it better over time.

Discover Pixi, ScreenCloud's new low-cost device designed to fill the gap left by Amazon Firesticks. Perfect for price-conscious customers, Pixi offers an easy setup and comprehensive features for digital signage.

Introducing Pixi: Affordable Digital Signage Solution

As most of you know, over the last 10 years, ScreenCloud has been running mostly on Amazon Firesticks. They've been a great consumer device that ran digital signage really well. However, as it was a consumer device, things changed. And Amazon decided that digital signage was no longer a good option for the consumer version. They have since released a business version. However, it left a gap in the market. We wanted to fill that gap with Pixi. Pixi is a low cost device that is super easy to set up and run digital signage on. We know that customers are price conscious about their capital expenditure when doing projects like this, especially when they're going to many, many screens. The Pixi is a perfect entry-level device that covers every single feature you required with digital signage, and of course, runs ScreenCloud really, really well. The little Pixi gives you a big bang for your buck. So if you'd like to trial a device, go to screencloud.com and buy one today.

Explore how trust and understanding customer pain points are crucial in the deployment of digital signage solutions. Dive into the importance of IT collaboration and delivering real business value in B2B SaaS environments.

Building Trust in Digital Signage Solutions

I think specific to digital signages is you have to very, very quickly build trust with the customer. IT is normally the team that we're initially working the most with, because ultimately the screens are on the network, and if it's on the network, it's the responsibility of IT. Now, if IT get on a call with you, and they don't think that you anticipate the needs and problems they're going to have, they're not going to trust you, in which case they're not going to back you and roll you out, right? So you have to build that relationship really carefully and deliberately from the very beginning. And normally that's just about anticipating the issues and the fears that they're going to have, because what they don't want is screens go down all the time. You go to the airport, you see black screens, blue screen of death, all that stuff. That's IT's worst nightmare, so you've got to really understand that pain, acknowledge it, and then show how you're going to work to alleviate that pain and minimize the risk in the future, because they don't want to be the person responsible for rolling out something that's a massive headache in a year's time. So I think trust is key. And then honestly, it's just really, it's kind of simple. You've just got to listen, got to listen to what they want. You don't necessarily have to do everything they say, but you've got to really kind of like focus on the pain. We don't want to be selling just like aspirin here. We want to be sending proper painkillers like, oh, I've got a little bit of a problem over here. Fine. I want to be solving major, major issues, right? Because otherwise it's so easy for SaaS products to fall into like a nice to have category. And especially in like a market like we're in now, no one's buying nice to have products, right? They're buying products which are going to deliver business value back to them. So you've got to really hook into that pain and figure out what you can do uniquely to help solve it. And I kind of 

Discover how the Middle East is leading the way in futuristic city developments with ambitious digital signage projects. Learn about the challenges and opportunities in this rapidly evolving market.

Exploring Future Cities: Digital Signage in the Middle East

So I was recently listening to a podcast interview hosted by Dave Haynes of 16.9, the digital signage industry blog, and Nita Odedra from Blue Rhine Industries. And she's a strategy director. Now, they're based in Dubai and work across all of the Middle East region. This stood out to me because I was actually born in Dubai and grew up in Dubai and also in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. But that was a long time ago, too long. A few things jumped out to me from the interview. Firstly, I've talked a bit in the past about when we are imagining workplaces and environments of the future, we often look to cinema and TV and science fiction to visualize what these environments might look like. But actually out in the Middle East, a lot of these are already being built today. So we're seeing cities of the future being built before our very eyes. And the good news for me, at least, is that they love screens. So here the market is a little bit different because we've got so many project development that are new. They're trying to do things different. You know, you've got cylinder LCDs, we've got pillars being clad, etc. They do have this pride in trying to put developments out there that are new, ambitious, something that is the largest. So yes, you know, that is there. And what that means is sometimes it comes with a bit of flash and you've got all bells, all whistles kind of installations for screens. And Dubai Mall is an example where I think that's the largest indoor screen in Dubai Mall. And you'll have other ones coming up in the next couple of years trying to beat that, I'm sure. So if you want to see future trends for our cities, I would advise going to take a trip. But she also highlighted some of the challenges they face. The biggest challenge she mentioned was that often the screens will be delayed because the whole building is delayed. Now, out in the UK and America where we normally work, the buildings we're operating in already exist and we just have to put the screens u

Discover the importance of understanding dwell times and peak traffic periods for effective digital signage. Learn how local insights and basic tracking can enhance your strategy and engage your audience during peak moments.

Optimising Digital Signage Strategy Effectively

Okay, another spicy take here. We have no idea about dwell times or peak traffic periods in front of our screens. Most screens are managed centrally by a small team who could have no idea really about every location those screens are in. Because even in the location itself, if that screen is by the entrance versus a break room versus being on the production line, for example, they're gonna have very different dwell times, which is the amount of time a person is in front of that screen. And peak traffic, which is just the number of people going by the screen every day, every week, even might be seasonal. If you multiply that by all of the locations and in the fact that those people aren't even based there, how are they ever going to truly understand this? That is justification for not doing it at all. But the reality is it's these peak moments during a day or during a week that you're going to capture the imagination and the attention of people that are so important to getting your digital signage strategy right. So we need to try and investigate more, talk to local managers, for example, they'll probably instinctively know, maybe even doing some basic tracking just on a number of screens, just to understand what's really going on. And then publishing our content and pushing the most important messages during those periods and anticipating the mood and the need of the audience in front of them. So dwell times, traffic times are really important. Mostly, none of us really have any idea what's going on, but we can do better at this.

Explore how the content displayed on workplace screens can significantly impact employee morale and customer perception. Learn why showing negative news might be detrimental and discover alternative solutions to enhance your organisational environment.

Optimising Workplace Screens for Positive Impact

So whatever you do, do not show cable news on your screens, in your workplace, to your employees, or even to your customers. Let me rewind. Every single business I know already has screens up on walls and they had some vision for why they put those screens there in the first place. But often over time, they become blank or just rotating a list of images around, or they end up showing cable news muted with subtitles. The issue is that the news is generally negative and divisive in many cases these days. So if we're pumping out this information to our prospective customers or our employees, we are impacting the mood of the environment. So for me, showing just even basic information, which is a bit outdated, would be better than generally bringing the vibe down. Imagine you're a potential customer. You're sat in the lobby of a building and you're watching the screen and it's talking about all of the various things which are going on in the world. You're about to go into a meeting talking about the budget for the next year. If you went in affected by what you had just seen on that screen, would you feel inclined to spend as much money, to be as optimistic for the future? The answer is simply no, you are affected by this. So when I look around, lobbies is classic, or break rooms, and I just see cable news being shown, I think, why are we doing this to ourselves? We see enough of it already. We don't need to contribute more. I understand why, because why not? But the reality is, it doesn't work. It affects the mood of the people. It changes the mood of your environment. So let's just do better than that.

Discover how Company TV from our Customer Success Team helps businesses strategically use screens to enhance communication and achieve key objectives. This service includes comprehensive site visits, insights reports, and targeted campaigns to improve various business metrics.

Strategic Business Engagement with Company TV

So, Company TV is another package that we have from our Customer Success Team, and this follows on from customers who've used Launchpad previously. If you don't know what Launchpad is, there'll be a link below to a video explaining that. So, Company TV is a little bit more strategic. You've already started to roll out your screens in your various locations, content is looking good, your team is trained up and working well with ScreenCloud, so now we start to get a little bit more strategic. The Customer Success Team will do a series of interviews, either like over Zoom or Teams, but ideally coming out in person to a site visit to really start to get under the skin of the business and the kind of key objectives you have that you'd like help with to communicate via screen. We then go away and we write an insights report where we'll pick up from all of those various interviews and our own research and come back to you with some recommendations around how we can use screens to strategically move a number in a certain direction. So, that might be reducing the number of accidents or increasing the percentage of open enrolment by the deadline, more people applying for internal job opportunities, or just a general sense that people have a better understanding of what's going on across the business and that being reflected in employee engagement surveys or something like that. So, we'll pick one of those key campaigns and then we will use our content team to come up with various ways in which we can educate the users, but also prompt action and calls to action and improve those numbers. We'll agree that with you, we'll go away and we'll do all of the work in combination with you and then we'll launch it and show the power of screens together. So, Company TV is about building a really wide set of content, but specifically about trying to move a number and training you in how to achieve that so you can then go on and run further campaigns in future and start to really make the

In this video, explore ScreenCloud's unique approach to combining office-based and remote work. Learn how their hub-based strategy fosters collaboration and growth while maintaining flexibility. Discover insights on the challenges and benefits of remote work within a team-oriented culture.

Balancing Office and Remote Work for Optimal Team Success

So, ScreenCloud has been around for almost 10 years now, but the business that it evolved out from has been around for 20 years. We've always taken a hub-based approach to our work, and we've always been international, so we've been in London and Bangkok from day one. I believe in a hub, basically an office where people can come to and collaborate and work, because the best work is done that way, especially when it's cross-functional between design, development, strategy, project management, marketing, whatever it might be. You need those teams to have trust, you need them to know each other, and to learn from each other, and that's what the office environment is for. I also believe that a lot of work can be done from home, so with the hubs we have a flexible approach, which is you do not have to be here all the time, and this was how our philosophy was from pre-COVID, especially once the technology had been set up to allow for that. So around the mid-2010s, this is when we began to really embrace it because we could, and not because we were hindered by previous technology, which forced us in the office. But I don't really believe in fully remote work. That doesn't mean I don't think it can't work. I think it needs to be intentional from the outset, and in the company's DNA from day one, which it just isn't in our DNA, and I don't think it ever will be. So I'm not against remote work completely, but I think that people who have previously had a culture based on the office, and then based on some flexibility, which I think is right, I don't think they can go fully remote. I don't think that's going to work. I've also noticed that the people who don't come in as often as the people that do are definitely hindered by that. I think that their growth, especially in early career, is limited. I don't think there is well-known in other teams, and cross-collaboration I think is something that's more of a struggle for them. And ultimately, I do think they don't get the greate

Discover the importance of digital signage as a key communication tool for businesses. Learn why having a single provider for digital screens can streamline messaging and enhance company-wide communication.

Making Screens Central to Business Communication

So, as you're no doubt aware, I think a lot about screens. And I am been thinking a lot about how to make screens truly valuable as a communication medium. In fact, my challenge is to try and make digital signage as important for businesses as email, especially for those companies with desktops and frontline workers. And so I've been doing a lot of introspection about how do we make this happen and how do you make this a reality? And the big realization I've had is that screens really will not have any power at all until they are ubiquitous. So until they feature in at least one screen in every location in the business, you could not have the CEO of that business talk to their comms leaders and say, push this message out to screen. Because what we find is in large companies, there's often 10, 20 providers, some of it's shadow IT projects done by the IT team themselves, USB sticks or multiple vendors like ScreenCloud. And so in order to put a message up on all of those screens, the comms professional probably need about 20 logins into email IT in various locations. It's just not going to happen. So to make it truly successful, you need one provider for all. Now, hopefully that is ScreenCloud, but in a recent example, we saw consolidation in a customer we had a good relationship with in the UK, but was headquartered in Germany. They decided to go with one provider for all countries and we lost out on that. And you know what? I think they were right to do it. Now, it's a shame that they didn't pick us as that provider and that's on us, but the actual principle of it, I completely agree with. Every company should be thinking about digital signage as one provider only. You wouldn't implement Gmail and Outlook. It doesn't make sense. So if we're going to take screen seriously as a communication medium, then we need to think about ubiquity. And that's why we have products like Launchpad and Company TV to help customers set up for future success rather than using screens ju

Explore how top SaaS companies achieve rapid growth through strategic planning and innovation. Learn about the 'core and explore' approach to product development and the importance of anticipating market trends to maintain a competitive edge.

Mastering SaaS Growth with Strategic Product Development

like the very best SaaS companies, when they kind of start to generate revenue, they do the triple, triple, double, double, right? Tripling in revenue annually, tripling, and then doubling and doubling. That is kind of like, that's like the gold standard for doing SaaS really, really well. And we were on that trajectory pre-COVID. But we actually took the bold decision is whilst we were even tripling in size, to actually start rebuilding our whole platform to anticipate the needs of enterprise, knowing that probably the defensive moat around the SMB was going to end up being a race to the bottom on price once they caught up a bit. So we kind of got ahead of ourselves. And thankfully, we did do that. Product market fit is almost like, it's not like a single thing. It's like you have it for a period, and then you've got to almost like anticipate what it's going to be again. So you've got to both catch current product market fit, but you've also got to have one eye down the road for like, what are the trends that are coming? And I call it, I call this thing core and explore, right? And it's how we generate, generally divide our kind of design and development product resources, basically. So 80% goes on core, which is like what you're building now, your roadmap, and 20% goes on these experimental down the road ideas. And right now, one of our biggest products, which is our own operating system for screens itself, it was an explore idea for a first year for one year, just with a couple of developers on it, just working out the viability and testing it a bit with some customers. That's now one of our core. So it does move, explore moves into core, doesn't always do that. We've had other things which have kind of been dropped and not developed further.

The CEO's role evolves significantly from 5 million to 20 million ARR. You shift from hands-on leadership to guiding a fully developed leadership team. You'll likely move upstream to bigger customers and contracts, requiring expanded support teams. And you'll need robust data and reporting systems to replace the organic understanding you had when directly involved in everything.

Evolving CEO Role from 5M to 20M ARR in B2B SaaS

So, on the journey from 5 million to 20 million ARR, I think the role of the CEO evolves in multiple ways, but the three that come to mind would be, firstly, how hands-on you are. At 5 million, you're still going to be very much in the trenches. You'll be building out the start of your leadership team, but you're probably still very much being the main leader and coach. At 20 million, you really need to have your leadership team fleshed out, and you're working mostly with them rather than with the people who are working inside of those teams. Secondly, if it's B2B SaaS, mostly I imagine you'll be going into bigger customers and bigger contracts. If you're doing small contract values at 5 million, you need to do a lot more of them to be keeping your growth rate going at 20 million. So, it's much easier if you can attract bigger customers and be selling more to those customers than just doing a massive number of customers. Not everyone follows that path, but generally speaking, most of us will probably go upstream, and that has a load of other elements to it, not just the product improving for enterprise and being more applicable to enterprise, but you also have to build out success teams, finance teams, even have more legal support, et cetera, to do that. And the third one would be numbers. At 5 million, you don't really need that extensive reporting. You need to be on top of your numbers so that you know what's going on. But you probably don't have a RevOps team necessarily really going at that point. By 20 million, you need to have data and reporting extensively to give you what previously you would have understood everything a bit more organically because you were involved in most of those things. When you're less involved at the day-to-day level, the data and reporting helps you to identify what isn't and isn't working well. And if you haven't got a good handle on that, a data lake and a good reporting system, you're going to struggle.

In this video, we explore the evolution of ScreenCloud's messaging strategy. Discover how we refined our focus from a broad idea to a clear software platform for digital signage, aimed at communicating important information within organisations and campuses.

Simplifying ScreenCloud's Digital Signage Solution

I don't think I was very good at explaining what ScreenCloud was at the beginning. I think one of the challenges is that you want to throw as many ideas out there in the hope that one or two of them stick, and it's really, really difficult to narrow down to something very simple. One, it makes the product seem a bit devalued because it's so simple, and two, you just feel that I might be missing out on something. So early stage, founders tend to say many, many things in the hope that something lands. As you get bigger and more confident in what you're saying, you tend to hone that down. So in the case of ScreenCloud, I really just say ScreenCloud is a software platform for digital signage. You'll know digital signage because out in the world, you see outdoor advertising screens, screens on transportation in the airport, you see those screens in retail, in quick serve restaurants, on the menu boards like McDonald's. We do that, but we don't tend to do it so much for that category. We're actually focused on screens that employees and students will see in their organizations and campuses, and we're using screens to communicate company information, employee information to them. So trying to keep it kind of analogous to what people will have experienced in their everyday life, and then honing in on what we're actually trying to achieve, which hopefully gets a bit of an aha moment from them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Rolling out large screen networks internationally is challenging. Our customer success team offers project management services through Roadmap 100—auditing locations, understanding IT requirements, and planning iterative rollouts. We start with varied locations (not just head office) to understand real-world challenges, making future deployments increasingly smooth and encouraging wider adoption.

Streamlining Global Screen Rollouts for Businesses

So one of the big challenges customers face is rolling out a very large network of screens, numbers of locations and even internationally at scale. This is definitely not straightforward. Our customer success team is actually here to help with project management services and planning in order to help audit all of those locations, really understand some of the key requirements that might be in there. So that'd be your IT requirements, whether there is power and internet connection and cabling already in place, whether screens are already there or they need to be ordered, and what various devices you might want to use, which may differ from country to country. None of this is straightforward and most of our customers haven't really experienced this at much at scale. So we have a product called Roadmap 100, that's a bit of a working title, which is the roadmap to 100% coverage of all of your screens. And mostly it goes into planning and iteration in the rollout of the first few locations. We like to start with a variety of locations, not just the head office, which is usually fairly easy, but also a more remote office or somewhere a bit further afield, so we can get a real sense of the challenges we're working with. Once we've done that a few times, things start to go very, very smoothly for the customers. And we find that the easier it is for people to roll out screens, the more they want to use them, which is not really much of a surprise. So consider working with us more closely in terms of rolling out that whole network, and we're here to help.

AI is currently more focused on consumers than businesses, and that makes sense. Consumers benefit hugely from it and provide valuable data for improvement, whilst facing less red tape around privacy and copyright concerns. Businesses are understandably more cautious. This mirrors what we saw with mobile and social media—consumer adoption first, business applications following later.

Why AI Prioritises Consumers Over Businesses

Right now, it feels that AI is really more focused on the consumer, and that makes a lot more sense. The consumer can benefit hugely from it. It's a great place to test and get a lot of data into the systems, which is what AI needs to improve. And there's less red tape, I think, around what consumers are happy to do. I think the trade-offs for better information, better pictures, videos, versus the content they're inputting is probably quite great, and consumers are happy to do that, where businesses are still a little worried about what this means for them, the privacy of their information, copyrights, and things like that. So it's no wonder that most AI companies are predominantly focused on the consumer, even though the business application is also pretty quickly applicable, too. I guess the exception to that rule might be Microsoft with their CoPilot product, but that is being eased into their products, and I'm absolutely sure there's many ways of opting out of it, knowing the way Microsoft is working. I think AI is going to follow for business slower than consumer, and this is exactly what we saw in the mobile days as well, and also social media. It really started with the consumer, and then businesses picked it up later down the line.

We're giving enterprises the option to disable AI features we've just launched. Most IT teams haven't finalised their AI policies yet, and their existing vendor contracts don't include AI terms. Whilst software will inevitably embrace AI more fully in future, right now businesses need time to update their thinking and renegotiate agreements.

Managing AI Features in Enterprise SaaS Products

So, you'd probably be surprised to hear that we are turning off AI features that we've just launched into the product. Well, we're not really turning them off for everyone. We're giving the option to turn them off. Most enterprise IT teams have not figured out their AI policy yet. And therefore, they've been through security reviews and vendor reviews with their existing SaaS partners, such as ScreenCloud, but that didn't include AI terms in those contracts. So, most of them have asked us for a toggle feature where they can remove the AI feature for now whilst they update their policies and renegotiate those master service agreements. So, that's something we're very happy to do. I think there will be a point in the future where it won't be possible to turn off every AI feature because I think software has to embrace these new ways of working and the benefits just way outweigh the negatives. However, now is not the time. I think this will probably come in maybe two years, depending, things are moving fairly quickly, but businesses will need to update their thinking around AI. But for the moment, it's come too soon, too quickly for them, and we totally understand that.

I delve into the concept of positive deviance in behavioural science, where outliers within a group solve problems in unique ways. By examining these innovative approaches, we can transform them into policies or products that benefit a wider audience.

Exploring Positive Deviance in Behavioural Science

Positive deviance is a concept in behavioural science when you look at a group of people and you examine the outliers. So people with the same knowledge, the same resources, there'll be a handful of them which are solving problems in an unusual way compared to the rest of the group. So an example that's often given is if you look at a poor community where often children are undernourished, and then look for the families where the children are well-nourished, you'll see that there's probably some concepts or ideas that have actually been generated by the family in order to do that. And then when you take those concepts and turn those into policy or products, and then roll that out for the benefit of the remainder of the group. So when it's B2B SaaS, you look at the customers who are using your product in unusual ways to achieve outsized outcomes. So you study those, learn from those and roll it back into product for the benefit of your wider group of customers.

Almost every large company we work with has tried digital signage before, but reliability remains the big issue. I heard of an IT engineer doing a 400-mile round trip just to push an HDMI cable in. The huge ROI saving with modern cloud-based signage is remote management—troubleshooting from afar without sending already-busy IT teams on costly road trips.

Enhancing Communication with Reliable Digital Signage

Almost every large company that we work with at ScreenCloud has tried to use digital signage before or is currently using digital signage. Very, very few people have never put screens up and tried to use them to communicate. When we talk to IT managers and administrators, one of the big issues is reliability. Screens go in every single location, but IT tends to be quite centrally managed or in hubs and not necessarily on the ground everywhere. I heard one story of an IT engineer having to do a 400-mile round trip just to push an HDMI cable in a little bit further. This is extremely costly, and sometimes it's done with contractors. And so a huge ROI saving when using modern cloud-based digital signage like ScreenCloud is in the reliability. The ability to remotely manage all of those devices, to know what's going on and to troubleshoot from afar and not have to send your IT team, who are already really far too busy and should be doing better things, out on the road just to push cables in and turn screens on and off.

Beyond immediate ROI from print savings, the elephant in the room is measuring productivity impact. A US communications company tested ScreenCloud on alternate floors for three months, then surveyed recall rates. Results were remarkable: recall jumped from 25-30% to 70-80%—but only for snackable content like events and deadlines, not complex storytelling like merger details.

Driving Productivity with Digital Signage Innovations

So I've talked extensively about immediate ROI of using modern digital signage. We've talked about reducing print costs and the time it takes to change those signs on the notice board. We've talked about reducing the burden on IT and automating more content up on the screens for the comms team. But the elephant in the room is clearly the impact of digital signage on driving change and productivity inside of a business. Now, unfortunately, as an industry, we don't really have standard ways of measuring this. Most people are doing it through pulse surveys, employee surveys, and looking for sentiment changes or any anecdotal evidence. We're trying to change that. And actually, I am hearing that there may even be a Google Analytics for Screens coming from the team at Google themselves. But obviously, we work very closely with our customers. We've heard multiple anecdotes of how screens are really driving change. So a very large US communications company was using ScreenCloud in their HQ and decided to initially install it on alternate floors. So some floors had ScreenCloud, some floors just had the notice boards as usual. And after three months, they did a survey based on the types of content that they had shown to see what the improvement on recall rates had been. The results were amazing. So recall rates were averaging, or most of this information, around 25% to 30% by default. When content was then shown on screen, it went up to 70% and 80%. But only for certain types of content. Some content had no impact at all. It was generally content that was more snackable and easy to remember. So it may be a big event or deadline coming up, or an announcement, or a bit of people updates and things like that. When it came to more nuanced storytelling about a recent merger, for example, it hadn't really improved things because probably that content was too complicated for people to pick up in that snackable way. We also worked with another customer recently who was using screens

Digital signage delivers immediate ROI by replacing print communication. Organisations save on print costs whilst eliminating the physical labour of updating 100+ noticeboards - a process that can take four hours for a single message change. You can push messages centrally, know they've been delivered, and manage everything from one person.

Optimising Communication with Digital Signage

So, when customers utilize digital science for their communication, they'll often see a correlating drop in print costs. Most of the communication going out historically has been printouts going up on notice boards. So this alone can be quite costly if they're doing it, you know, using a proper print company, or even just really spending loads of paper going out to all of their many, many locations. The other aspect of this is just the physical time. So if you have a large facility, some facilities have upwards of 100 notice boards, someone needs to go around and remove a piece of paper and add in a new one. And if there's any mistakes, they have to go back and do it all again. And we've heard that process taking upwards of four hours just to change one message. And then, of course, you're never quite sure when that's been completed, or if it's even been done at all, or if any have been missed. So there is a big ROI saving immediately by able to just push those messages out onto a screen, know that they've gone out, and have them all managed centrally by just one person.

I recently heard Kunal Shah discuss his Delta 4 framework for evaluating startups, and it really resonated. When a product delivers a 4+ point efficiency improvement, it creates irreversible behaviour change and natural advocacy. I'm thinking about how we can apply this lens to ScreenCloud as we enter the AI era.

Exploring the Delta 4 Framework for Startup Success

So I was listening to an interview recently with extremely talented Indian entrepreneur called Kunal Shah, and he was talking about his Delta 4 framework for assessing new startups. Let's say I asked you that, what do you think is the efficiency score of booking a cab through Uber on 10 or versus the old method that existed of booking cabs, whatever that method was, most people would say, maybe this is seven, eight on 10. That is maybe two on 10, one on 10, three on 10. So the framework was very simple that every time the Delta of efficiency score is greater than equal to four, three things happen. Uh, it's an irreversible behavior. Once you experience a Delta 4 product or service, you cannot go back. Uh, there is obviously very, very high tolerance. Uh, that's the second thing that, uh, you will hate Uber, but you're not going to like, dammit, I'm going to delete this app and I'm going to move to a more inefficient behavior. The third thing is what I call a UBP, a unique brag worthy proposition. Humans, when they discover something Delta 4, they can't stop bragging about it everywhere. So there's several things I like about this framework. Firstly, I think it's true. Um, and that actually we probably don't try and stress test new companies against something like this, uh, anywhere near as much. And he also goes on to talk about how this is local and how something that's worked very well in America hasn't necessarily worked as well as in India, because the way that people operate is just so vastly different. Um, but what really got me was that, um, we could also apply this to our own products. So ScreenCloud isn't a startup anymore, but we are about to go through a massive period of change, um, with AI and generative technologies. So the ways of doing things previously through content management systems, uploading files and all of that, probably is going to look pretty archaic quite soon, however, um, although we are all aware of AI being around us right now, we're 

I think consumer screens and USB sticks get unfairly criticised in the digital signage community. They're actually brilliant for testing use cases cheaply and getting content up quickly to see what works. Yes, you'll hit scaling challenges eventually, but you're proving the concept first and winning over internal sceptics.

Exploring Digital Signage with Consumer Screens

The professional digital signage community tends to frown upon the use of consumer screens or even USB sticks stuck into the back of those screens playing a playlist of images. I actually think they're fine. Here's why. Customers are trying out the use case. They're experimenting very cheap and excessively, getting their content up onto screen and seeing if that has actually got the impact on their customers or their employees or their students. And there is nothing wrong with that. They will soon hit a stumbling block in terms of scaling out that network, making it easy to swap out the content. But what they're really doing is showing that the screen can work in the first place and maybe winning over some of the naysayers in their own business to show that screens is actually a great communication platform.

I explain how ScreenCloud partners with employee communication platforms rather than competing with them. We extend their content to digital screens, reaching deskless and frontline workers who lack access to email and apps. By 'second-lifing' content and using QR codes to drive engagement, we amplify the reach and effectiveness of existing communication tools.

Enhancing Communication with Digital Signage

Does ScreenCloud compete with employee communication platforms? The answer is no. We partner with them. They're producing content and pushing out to digital channels like email and employee apps, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. We add the digital signage component to that platform. So we're taking feeds of it, and we're pushing it up to screen so everyone can see it, like those deskless and frontline workers who might not have access to those other channels. But we're also second-lifing that content, giving it more exposure so people are understanding that message, and then we're driving traffic back into those products via QR codes so people can consume the whole thing. So we're very much a partner and definitely not a competitor.

I argue that screens currently rank below email, video conferencing, and instant messaging in corporate communications because they're not being used properly. As luminous boxes that tap into subconscious cognition, strategically-deployed screens should be fundamental communication tools.

Maximising the Impact of Digital Screens in Communication

Are screens as important as email to most companies? The answer is no. Email is probably at the top, video conferencing number two, maybe number three would be instant messaging on Slack or Teams, etc. Screens are probably the slightly awkward cousin you have to invite to Christmas of the communication mix, and that's because they're not being used properly. However, they are big, bright, luminous boxes which attract our attention and tap into our subconscious cognition. So done right, screens should be a fundamental part of the communication mix, but it does mean you need to do them correctly and really think about your strategy and what you're trying to communicate to your audience when and where. And that's what we're trying to achieve with these videos so that one day screens are as important as email.

I address the perceived tension between company objectives and audience needs in digital signage. With screens running 8-24 hours daily at high frequency, there's ample opportunity for diverse content; the real challenge is usually having too little content, not too much.

Bridging the Gap in Digital Signage Content

We know that there is a disconnect between company objectives and audience needs when it comes to digital signage content. Customers often worry about this, but there's really no need. The screens are on in these environments for 8, 12, or 24 hours a day, and people are going to be seeing the screens at a really high frequency. So there is plenty of opportunity to put up the content that everyone wants. In fact, the problem isn't usually that there's too much content, it's usually that there's too little.

I discuss the importance of planning digital signage content around annual business rhythms and quarterly objectives. Strategic seasonal planning creates coherent narratives whilst reducing reactive content decisions throughout the year.

Maximise Impact with Seasonal Digital Signage Strategies

So when it comes to seasonality, this is an important thing to consider when you're putting together your annual content calendar. And we would advise really thinking long-term about this because a screen is not just for Christmas. It's a commitment, right? And there's different ways of adjusting towards that commitment. But if you think about the flow of a year inside of a business and the natural seasonality of like, when are people typically joining this company? Or what are the key times of the year where certain things are happening? We all basically understand inside of our own businesses, there is a rhythm of the year. And in each of those periods, and it could just be quarterly or monthly, you're thinking about what are the main objectives? What are the things that we're really trying to work on? Where do we want to focus our attention in this quarter? It might not necessarily be related to the season. It might be to just think in this quarter, we're going to focus primarily on our safety record. On this quarter, we're going to focus more on education and upskilling. On this quarter, it's towards the end of the financial year, we're going to have a big push for productivity. So you can build these themes amongst your kind of regular everyday content. And adding in that seasonality is going to help you build a narrative for how you're communicating to your audience over that year. It'll also give you more ideas and probably a bit less of a reactionary state in terms of how you're putting content up on those screens. So just think more about what the business is trying to respond to. And then think, how can that be applied to my screens and the campaigns we put on them at certain times of the year?